Citing other MLA sources?
The full MLA 9 Citation Generator handles books, journal articles, films, websites, podcasts, and more.
Paste a YouTube URL. Get a clean MLA 9 Works Cited entry for the video plus a matching in-text citation. Handles "Uploaded by," channel-as-author, the upload date, and timestamp citations for in-text quotes. Free, no signup.
Tip: Paste the video URL — we'll pull the title, channel, and upload date automatically.
The first decision when citing a YouTube video in MLA 9 is who counts as the author. If the video has a clear creator — a director, a researcher, an institution that produced it — that person or org goes in the author slot, and the channel that uploaded it goes in an "Uploaded by" contributor slot. If the video is just a channel publishing its own content (vlogs, channel essays, news clips), the channel is the author and "Uploaded by" is omitted. Most student citations land in the second case: the channel is the author.
Vox. "How One Line in the Oldest Math Text Hinted at Hidden Universes." YouTube, 13 Sept. 2023, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2RFnv_uX2k.
Sapolsky, Robert. "Behavioral Biology, Lecture 1." YouTube, uploaded by Stanford, 1 Feb. 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA.
https://; keep the full path with the video ID. End with a period.Standard MLA in-text uses author + locator, but YouTube videos have no page numbers. Use a timestamp instead, in hh:mm:ss format, when quoting or referencing a specific moment: (Vox 03:14). For a general reference to the video as a whole, just the author is enough: (Vox). For a range (e.g., a quoted passage), use a hyphenated range: (Sapolsky 12:30–13:05). Always include the leading hours digit if the video is over an hour, even if the hours are zero — keeps the format consistent.
(Vox 03:14)
youtu.be. Use the full www.youtube.com/watch?v=… form.https://. MLA 9 strips the protocol.Paste a YouTube URL and we read the page metadata (Open Graph tags, schema.org JSON-LD) for the video title, channel name, and upload date. The CSL engine renders MLA 9 formatting: title in quotes, italicized YouTube, day-month-year date, bare URL with no protocol. The matching in-text (Author) citation comes alongside — add a timestamp by hand when you're quoting a specific moment.
If the video is on the channel that produced it (vlogs, channel essays, news clips), the channel goes in the author slot — Vox produced and uploaded the Vox video. If the video features a specific creator on a different channel (a lecturer's talk uploaded by a university, a film clip uploaded by a fan), put the creator in the author slot and add "uploaded by [Channel]" after the container.
Use the channel name as the author. Channels are treated like organizational authors — list them by their displayed name (including stylization). If even the channel is unknown, start with the video title in quotation marks.
Add the hh:mm:ss timestamp inside the in-text parentheses: (Vox 03:14). For a range, use a hyphen: (Sapolsky 12:30–13:05). The Works Cited entry doesn't include the timestamp — only the in-text citation does.
If you're citing the original film, cite the film itself (use the Film source type). If you're specifically citing the YouTube upload of the trailer or clip — say, because you're discussing how it's been edited or distributed — cite it as a video with the channel that uploaded it as the author and "uploaded by" the channel that owns the original work as needed.
Optional. MLA 9 recommends an access date for online sources only when the upload date is missing or when the content might change. YouTube videos always have upload dates, so the access date isn't required — though some instructors still ask for it. If included: … www.youtube.com/watch?v=…. Accessed 12 May 2026.
Comment author (or username). Comment on "Video Title." YouTube, uploaded by Channel, comment posted day month year, www.youtube.com/watch?v=…. Treat it like a comment on a webpage. In-text uses the comment author's name.
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